Many Are Cold, but Few Are Frozen

I used to think the word "shrimp" meant some little pink and white thing you'd see in a cocktail glass. So imagine the shock of seeing this gigantic breeder at a model hatchery in Aceh, on the northern tip of Sumatra. We called her Big Momma. A breeder like this can produce a million eggs.

Aceh is a producer of Penaeus Monodon, or Black Tiger shrimp. The Acehnese shrimp sector has seen hard times: it was slammed by disease in the 1990s, crippled by decades of civil conflict, and in 2004, ravaged by the Tsunami.

One of my organization's projects was to rebuild the Acehnese shrimp sector, which employs about 100,000 people. It was a great project, and played an important role in the recovery of the sector. You can read about it in the World Bank's East Asia & Pacific Blog.

Black Tiger shrimp is big and incredibly delicious, especially on a grill. It's not easy to find in the West, so if you see it, try it. If there were such a thing as designer shrimp, this would be it.